One-off short stories

How to be an evil mastermind (and get away with it)

I don't even know what this is... Call it experience from reading and writing stuff.
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Step 1: Know more than everyone else you may end up affiliated with. Don't even start until you can outplay anyone you go against. Be at least 3 steps ahead of everyone at all times.

Step 2: Don't be evil until it's absolutely necessary. Be an actual good guy for as long as humanly possible. At best, get yourself in a leadership position in the good guys team, and then actually be a leader and take down the (other) bad guys.

Step 3: Help out anyone who is worried or needs help. This goes hand in hand with step 2. You need people to trust you, to think of you as their friend. If you can't do this, you'll never succeed at being an evil mastermind.

Step 4: Don't get actually attached to anyone. This is by far the hardest step. Because as people start to get close to you, it's real easy to get close to them back. The only exception to this rule is if you think you can convince someone to help you, even if you're evil. The only exception to that, is if that person is stupid and could mess up your own plan. Never, ever, get attached to a stupid person.

Step 5: Don't leave anything that could possibly end up revealing who you are/your evil plan. Like, don't even do any of it on a computer. It's best if you can remember it, if not, leave it on paper. And never, ever, use names.

Step 6: Make sure you have one person in your group you can use as a scapegoat. One person that will definitely get accused before you. And make sure you aren't the one who blames that person. That makes you far more suspicious.

Step 7: Don't do a large reveal that you're the villain, even when you're certain you've won. Like, it'll be fun, and you can make all your good friends get shocked, but it'll almost always backfire in the end. Only reveal you're the villain to one person at the time. Then kill them, or blackmail them, or do something like that. That works.

Step 8: When (or if) you get caught, escape immediately. There's no way one of your old 'friends' won't hate you so much that they will try to kill you. It's also possible they won't be able to accept you're evil and you still can twist them or take advantage of them. But never count on that. Never count on anything as an evil mastermind.

Step 9: Once you succeed at your plan, immediately disappear and find a new identity. Don't continue being the same bad guy, even if you now have power or a larger reach. If that's what you do, you'll eventually be found out from a mistake you made in the past.

Step 10: Repeat steps and do what worked again.

Step 11: ???????

Step 12: Profit